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Universal Basic Income (UBI) is coming
- Thread starter Buckminster
- Start date
2 mins in, mentions Biden is commissioning a report looking at strengthening labour market support for workers that lose their jobs to AI. Not UBI but moving in that direction probably quicker than I expected.
Also remember that the S&P 500 upwards performance is really due to the top 7 stocks, which are all tech companies. The rest of the S&P 493 has not performed nearly as well.
adiggs
Well-Known Member
This dynamic - the transformation of the S&P 500 to the S&P 10 (or 7, or whatever very small number you care to draw the cut line at) is causing me to devalue historical comparisons of performance vs. the index.
Historically the S&P 500 has been used as a good proxy / measure of the US economy broadly, and the US stock market more particularly. When such a small fraction of the index makes up such a large fraction of the market value, and that small fraction is so focused in such a limited portion of the industries that make up the economy, then this proxy meaning of the index has changed.
In this particular context, tech companies tend to have better leverage converting (numbers of) employment into profit. It's a huge part of why they are so highly valued. Whether it is a reasonable or correct interpretation, it is at least an alternative explanation for the divergence in the chart from the historical pattern. We might see that divergence be the norm in the future, rather than a short term exception.
I don't know what it would be - only that that I wish I had a better measure of the broad economy. I'm not thrilled with the equal weight S&P 500 if for no other reason I don't believe it can be a meaningfully large replacement as actual index funds - if too much money flows into such a fund, then the purchases of "small" companies in the index are likely to be too large to be supported (to illustrate - you can't buy $10B worth of stock in a company otherwise worth $1B. Or at least not without a huge market disruption).
adiggs
Well-Known Member
My wife sent me this article about a UBI study:
For me at least, enthralling.
For me at least, enthralling.
UkNorthampton
TSLA - 12+ startups in 1
Really interesting.
Rough summary:-
- Monthly (guaranteed 2 OR 12 years) vs lump sum vs control getting no money
- Lump sum works better, people create businesses
- Even for monthly receivers, they used savings clubs (one person gets lump sum, take it in turns) which emulated lump sums
- Researchers surprised
Perhaps Universal Basic Income should have a portion that is a lottery. After all, life is a lottery. People might plan out what they'd do when they won, they could do something meaningful, retrain, change jobs, travel, build own house. Adding variability seems like a good idea. A steady-state lifestyle of dependency worries some people. Adding chance/lump sums should help.
Foxsbiscuits
Member
UBI seems inevitable but radical. It challenges the whole worker/economic system that some people have committed themselves to their whole lives. The financial/psychological relief it would bring to people is enormous; it's the cornerstone of a kinder, fairer society.
I'm not sure there will be a moment where people get depressed for not working etc. UBI should start out small. Then replace benefits. At this stage most will be in work full time. Some will then take part time work etc. Governments will probably mandate <20 hour weeks etc.
Canada jumping to 2k CAD per month seems way too high as a starting point for lots of reasons.
Foxsbiscuits
Member
I'm glad to see it beginning, it'll inspire others and start the real world testing.
I also think the pitch is important, it shouldn't be seen as another benefits system. Instead it's setting the foundation for a society where poverty is (theoretically) impossible. Otherwise it sets up discrimination/othering and can be another easy divide for media to spin.
I also think the pitch is important, it shouldn't be seen as another benefits system. Instead it's setting the foundation for a society where poverty is (theoretically) impossible. Otherwise it sets up discrimination/othering and can be another easy divide for media to spin.
Foxsbiscuits
Member
I'm not sure your stance but I don't agree with that tweets reasoning. The fact he uses the word parasite to refer to people who would be supported by this system shows his position and level of respect to others.
Sources -
economictimes.indiatimes.com
or
www.ubiworks.ca
or more general points -
www.ubilabmanchester.org
Sources -
Universal Basic Income does not cause inflation
Universal basic income (UBI) is a policy that would give all citizens an unconditional, predictable income to cover their basic needs. There is widespread belief that any monetary intervention stimulates hyperinflation of the form found in 1920s Germany, 1990s Argentina and 2000s Zimbabwe...
or
Basic Income – Will it cause inflation?
Evidence from Canada and around the world shows how direct cash can ease the pain of rising costs.
www.ubiworks.ca
or more general points -
UBI Frequently Asked Questions — UBI Lab Manchester
This page answers some of the major questions asked to us on Universal Basic Income. Here we provide lots of information and resources on UBI.
www.ubilabmanchester.org
ChooseFreedom
Member
So. Many. Problems.
First, where is the money coming from? The governments? Where are they getting it? They're all already going more and more in debt right now!
It would be immediate hyper-inflation. The governments would have to create record amounts of fiat! They're already doing it now, but they aren't using nearly the capital that UBI would require.
Are you eliminating all other forms of public/gov assistance programs to pay for UBI? That would mean privatizing everything. Can't even start to imagine those ramifications.
Everyone gets the same amount, no matter what their jobs are? Sounds a lot like Communism to me. Which has never worked at scale.
Governments will only use UBI for one reason, control. They're roll out their UBI via a CBDC. It's digital slavery.
AI is barely at the replication phase. That's all it can do, replicate, copy. It just happens to have access to all the internet's data, so it can copy/combine lots of things faster than humans can. But none of it is solely original. AI is not a threat. The people writing the code are the threat.
Does no one have any sense of history anymore?
All of these same arguments were made about past technological breakthroughs. Like when the cotton gin, printing press, steam engine, internal combustion engine, the computer, microprocessor, the internet, were all invented. And what happened? Sure some specific jobs were eliminated, but guess what. Those people found other jobs, and younger people just took those type of jobs off of their list of potential employment options.
Robotics isn't new. It's been eliminating jobs for 50 yrs? So technology is going to keep doing what technology does, advance.
The robots get more sophisticated. The tasks they can do get more complicated.
The reality is, while a few smart minds and innovative companies continue to evolve robotic hardware and software, we as human beings, are actually devolving as a whole (Darwin must be rolling). Our minds can't keep up with the tech advancements. That's the scary part. There are developers that are certainly very smart for a human. But they're trying to write code or build machines, that not even they fully understand from a future consequences perspective.
The dinosaurs reigned for 10's of thousands of years, and would very much likely still be today if not for a massive cosmic event.
But just looking at what humans have done in the past 5 hundred years, at the rate in which we're going, exponentially outpacing our own evolution, we probably won't even survive 5 hundred years from now.
We're burning the candle at both ends when it comes to living on this planet.
Funny how science fiction can become reality. I am all too often reminded of the movie Wall-E.
Humans have made Earth uninhabitable. They build a big space ship where everyone has all that they need (sound familiar, UBI), and slowly, generation by generation, they just become fatter, weaker, useless, unproductive, disconnected from each other, isolated, for all intents and purposes already extinct. That's exactly what we're doing.
Except, unlike the movie which uses love as a way back, our species is so divided that we can't recover in time to save ourselves.
Sorry to be so bleak and blunt, but it's true. Our reign on Earth is nearing an end. And Earth will recover, and I guess the next dynasty to reign will be the rest of the mammals, which I can see lasting far longer than we did.
First, where is the money coming from? The governments? Where are they getting it? They're all already going more and more in debt right now!
It would be immediate hyper-inflation. The governments would have to create record amounts of fiat! They're already doing it now, but they aren't using nearly the capital that UBI would require.
Are you eliminating all other forms of public/gov assistance programs to pay for UBI? That would mean privatizing everything. Can't even start to imagine those ramifications.
Everyone gets the same amount, no matter what their jobs are? Sounds a lot like Communism to me. Which has never worked at scale.
Governments will only use UBI for one reason, control. They're roll out their UBI via a CBDC. It's digital slavery.
AI is barely at the replication phase. That's all it can do, replicate, copy. It just happens to have access to all the internet's data, so it can copy/combine lots of things faster than humans can. But none of it is solely original. AI is not a threat. The people writing the code are the threat.
Does no one have any sense of history anymore?
All of these same arguments were made about past technological breakthroughs. Like when the cotton gin, printing press, steam engine, internal combustion engine, the computer, microprocessor, the internet, were all invented. And what happened? Sure some specific jobs were eliminated, but guess what. Those people found other jobs, and younger people just took those type of jobs off of their list of potential employment options.
Robotics isn't new. It's been eliminating jobs for 50 yrs? So technology is going to keep doing what technology does, advance.
The robots get more sophisticated. The tasks they can do get more complicated.
The reality is, while a few smart minds and innovative companies continue to evolve robotic hardware and software, we as human beings, are actually devolving as a whole (Darwin must be rolling). Our minds can't keep up with the tech advancements. That's the scary part. There are developers that are certainly very smart for a human. But they're trying to write code or build machines, that not even they fully understand from a future consequences perspective.
The dinosaurs reigned for 10's of thousands of years, and would very much likely still be today if not for a massive cosmic event.
But just looking at what humans have done in the past 5 hundred years, at the rate in which we're going, exponentially outpacing our own evolution, we probably won't even survive 5 hundred years from now.
We're burning the candle at both ends when it comes to living on this planet.
Funny how science fiction can become reality. I am all too often reminded of the movie Wall-E.
Humans have made Earth uninhabitable. They build a big space ship where everyone has all that they need (sound familiar, UBI), and slowly, generation by generation, they just become fatter, weaker, useless, unproductive, disconnected from each other, isolated, for all intents and purposes already extinct. That's exactly what we're doing.
Except, unlike the movie which uses love as a way back, our species is so divided that we can't recover in time to save ourselves.
Sorry to be so bleak and blunt, but it's true. Our reign on Earth is nearing an end. And Earth will recover, and I guess the next dynasty to reign will be the rest of the mammals, which I can see lasting far longer than we did.
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